I'll tell you what, instead of watching your little video, I'll just walk across the street and have a good conversation with my 80 year old neighbor. You know, the one who had to flee China as a teen, after seeing his family slaughtered by the communists. I'll ask him about the few surviving relatives he has. About how he's still not able to go back.
Or perhaps I'll go back to Hong Kong on business, and talk to some individuals who smuggle Bibles into China. Well, those who haven't been tortured or killed when caught. I mean, whether you think their faith is wack or not, what type of government has to be afraid of a 2000 year old book ?
Yeah, I'll probably loose karma for quoting Ecclesiastes
1:9, but it is Sunday, and we are talking about China... and it's no like
we haven't talked about this subject before, even on our beloved/.
Still, for those who thought human rights weren't an olympic issue, just think
of how much fun it's not going to be to go the Olympics and attempt to transmit
stories and images of the results from behind the Great
Firewall. So much for thinking that bringing
commerce and communications would have the same effect as the barbarians
did to Rome.
Hopefully, some clever hacks out there will figure ways of circumventing, if
the price isn't too high. Sometimes I just wonder if we just shouldn't have
listened to Patton
and MacArthur
and been done with the problem 50 years ago ?!
I haven't run into a copy protected CD, but then again, my tastes in music and media aren't all that mainstream.
That said, I find it interesting, but not unusual for CDs and other media to be released, without mentioning that they're copy-protected. I suspect the reason is that most copy-protection schemes are temporal at best. They're sort of like locks on our doors and cars, they keep the honest man honest.
I found some interesting articles along this same topic:
Considering the amount of hardware that gets tested, swapped, broken and added to such an endeavor, I was wondering just how frustrating it would be to attempt such development on Windows XP ?
Or better yet, I can see it now, during the day of the competition. The bot's about to get sliced-n-diced by the entry from Ginsu*matic while the operator of the XP bot is trying to get through the MS validation process on a cell phone.
Then I thought about all the times I've been on the road for trade shows... all the last minute hardware changes... but I digress.
I'm wondering how much time (not to mention cpu cycles) these guys could have saved if these guys had hacked a much simpler operating system ? Perhaps using some old-school PD source such as Tom Poindexter's Crobots or perhaps or one of it's various mutant prodginy such as the linux based C-Robots ?
Re:Mowing lawns was quaint in the past, but is dem
on
Webvan Out Of Gas
·
· Score: 1
Oh yeah, that's right. I keep forgetting. The work ethic is old school. And let's face the reality that all 14 year old boys are as capable as a 14 year veteran of... let's say a real programming job ?
I guess that's why I see so many hard-working South-American immigrants cutting lawns... and doing other work our fat, pasty, lard-ass, spoiled teens find beneath them.
Okay, let's haul your butt into the boss' chair and let him ream you out for not stopping to say b'bye or h'lo to each and every admin along the way to your office/cubicle/cave what-have-you. Especially when you're deep in thought about something.
And fine, go ahead, waste your time with Joe in accounting's spreadsheet... does it make you a better code ?
More importantly, do having to deal with either make you a MORE PRODUCTIVE coder.
I'm not talking about being anti-social. Say hi, sure, but it shouldn't be mandatory. Integrate spreadsheets. Yes, if they're not some hack by a person who's better suited at counting beans.
Yeah, I forgot I was in HTML mode...ack okay, here goes again:
Once again a lazy writer has dipped into the business section of the library and pulled out a book on team leaders, managing projects or some other re-hash of tripe that directs pinheads in training how to avoid employees who'll make them work for a living. Only this time, they've made it a bit more humorous by adding the comments of the most no-talented industry of all, headhunters.
You know, the type that will talk down your skills so you take the first offer and so they don't actually have to find the right fit. Here we have the typical interview of an IT manager of what would appear to be a very small shop, where having a lone gunman would be just the ticket for tackling the wide-variety of jobs and problems that plauge small but wealthy trading institutions. Along with this is the typical example of the extreme; in this the coder who wouldn't share.
Part of the problem is that writers, pinheads and 'recruiters' don't wouldn't know what a real prima donna was, even if one came up and bit them in the assets. Real artists programmers just do. They spend their time in the code. Mostly what they want in return is some appreciation for their work, and to be left out of anything that is mundane, boring or lightweight. They also want some input on the decision making process. Usually, 'attendance' problems, attitude problems and other crap begin to happen with the Prima doesn't feel apprecaited for their work. Problem is, managers excel at making sure this happens. They schedule deadlines outside of any technical reality... nothing brings out the survival instinct in programming staff like a good old fashion Yourdonesque Death March ! Well, nothing else except when managers steal the curtain call.
And nothing creates an attitude problem quicker than allowing other non-technical staff to whine and complain about stuff that doesn't count. "The admins are upset you don't say hi to them in the hallways." "Joe in accounting is upset because you wouldn't integrate his spreadsheet into the enterprise."
As for the "I am a rock, I am an island" syndrome. Well, if managers wouldn't play the game of overstaffing client/contract projects with one hotshot at top dollar, and 5 lamers at the lowest cost then perhaps the hot-shot wouldn't be so darned hostile to those working around him. The problem is that Prima Donnas are like opera singers. You've got to give them an aria or two, let them get a laugh here and there, take a solo bow and tell them that they're the best. And most of them, except for sopranos, like to work with other professionals... note, I said professionals. That and they love to make diciples.
Problem is, managers and headhunters egos are often too large or fragile. They're ambition is greater than the people for whom they serve... oh wait, I forgot, most managers don't realize their job is to support their staff to make sure they've got what they want and need to get the job done. Well, not all managers.
Mine understands all of the above... and man, all the prima donnas are to busy kicking ass because he gets it
I've worked in some body shops who's main client is Uncle Sam. Usually, these type of 'world class' organizations underbid the crap out of a contract... and then usually staff the project with one Primo, and 4 or 5 lamers... all charging at the highest man-hour rate the customer will bear.
The result is that one or two individuals do all the work, while the poorly trained, non-language-speaking, lazy lamers go to all the meetings, are assigned all the testing. Management makes money off of the 4 or 5 lamers because they're paying them peanuts while charging the client up the wazoo.
Then the same managers wonder why they've got prima donna problems.
Hmm... after some thought. I strikes me that the writer has confused Prima Donna with someone who's either immature and/or has some mental/emotional baggage.
After 18 years, I can tell you, it's some punk who finally learned how to hook an API call in Visual Basic that makes all the noise.
Once again a lazy writer has dipped into the business section of the library and pulled out a book on team leaders, managing projects or some other re-hash of tripe that directs pinheads in training how to avoid employees who'll make them work for a living.
Only this time, they've made it a bit more humorous by adding the comments of the most no-talented industry of all, headhunters. You know, the type that will talk down your skills so you take the first offer and so they don't actually have to find the right fit.
Here we have the typical interview of an IT manager of what would appear to be a very small shop, where having a lone gunman would be just the ticket for tackling the wide-variety of jobs and problems that plauge small but wealthy trading institutions. Along with this is the typical example of the extreme; in this the coder who wouldn't share.
Part of the problem is that writers, pinheads and 'recruiters' don't wouldn't know what a real prima donna was, even if one came up and bit them in the assets.
Real artists programmers just do. They spend their time in the code. Mostly what they want in return is some appreciation for their work, and to be left out of anything that is mundane, boring or lightweight. They also want some input on the decision making process.
Usually, 'attendance' problems, attitude problems and other crap begin to happen with the Prima doesn't feel apprecaited for their work. Problem is, managers excel at making sure this happens.
They schedule deadlines outside of any technical reality... nothing brings out the survival instinct in programming staff like a good old fashion Yourdonesque Death March ! Well, nothing else except when managers steal the curtain call.
And nothing creates an attitude problem quicker than allowing other non-technical staff to whine and complain about stuff that doesn't count. "The admins are upset you don't say hi to them in the hallways." "Joe in accounting is upset because you wouldn't integrate his spreadsheet into the enterprise."
As for the "I am a rock, I am an island" syndrome. Well, if managers wouldn't play the game of overstaffing client/contract projects with one hotshot at top dollar, and 5 lamers at the lowest cost then perhaps the hot-shot wouldn't be so darned hostile to those working around him.
The problem is that Prima Donnas are like opera singers. You've got to give them an aria or two, let them get a laugh here and there, take a solo bow and tell them that they're the best. And most of them, except for sopranos, like to work with other professionals... note, I said professionals. That and they love to make diciples.
Problem is, managers and headhunters egos are often too large or fragile. They're ambition is greater than the people for whom they serve... oh wait, I forgot, most managers don't realize their job is to support their staff to make sure they've got what they want and need to get the job done.
Well, not all managers. Mine understands all of the above... and man, all the prima donnas are to busy kicking ass because he gets it.
The way this discussion is going, I figured I might mention a website that is dedicated to TV Shows that go from popular, to DOA through a process known as "Jumping the Shark". Here's are the gory X-File specifics to this : http://jumptheshark.com/x/xfiles.htm
One word of advice for Kodak... if possible, port the code to 'other' platforms, and GPL the darn code. It might buy Kodak the survivability it seeks... and deny others the ability to blackmail them to get their app on top.
I'm no lawyer, nor do I play one on T.V. But isn't there a Constitutional/Bill-o-Rights issue here of due justice that superscedes the rental companies policy ?
Does Entropy Apply to ORBS ?
on
ORBS Forks
·
· Score: 1
In my dark-ages school days, I studied electronic music in an old analog sound studio that included a huge MOOG Series III Synthesizer, and a rubber-band/tone-arm modulator (among other wierd home-brewed fun). We were always warned about not making too many generations of a copy as it would degrade.
The stock example given to us was the "copy of a photocopy"... where eventually, the document would degrade into a cacophony
of white noise.
So the question du'jour is, does this princpal apply to ORBS listings ?
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds trivial, but after you've been looking at search engines all day, Google's little graphic tributes to this and that go a long way.
Or perhaps I'll go back to Hong Kong on business, and talk to some individuals who smuggle Bibles into China. Well, those who haven't been tortured or killed when caught. I mean, whether you think their faith is wack or not, what type of government has to be afraid of a 2000 year old book ?
Can you say Persecution ?!
Touche !
- Unless stated otherwise, Chinese athletes win everything;
- In those cases where their athletes don't win, it was due the evils of western corruption;
Keep all that in mind and the Olympics should be a wonderful showcase for world peace.Yeah, I'll probably loose karma for quoting Ecclesiastes 1:9, but it is Sunday, and we are talking about China ... and it's no like
we haven't talked about this subject before, even on our beloved /.
Still, for those who thought human rights weren't an olympic issue, just think of how much fun it's not going to be to go the Olympics and attempt to transmit stories and images of the results from behind the Great Firewall. So much for thinking that bringing commerce and communications would have the same effect as the barbarians did to Rome.
Hopefully, some clever hacks out there will figure ways of circumventing, if the price isn't too high. Sometimes I just wonder if we just shouldn't have listened to Patton and MacArthur and been done with the problem 50 years ago ?!
TO which I reply ... more effective at what ... PISSING ME OFF ?!
Guess it's a good thing I have ad-blocking software to help me from going postal.
That said, I find it interesting, but not unusual for CDs and other media to be released, without mentioning that they're copy-protected. I suspect the reason is that most copy-protection schemes are temporal at best. They're sort of like locks on our doors and cars, they keep the honest man honest.
I found some interesting articles along this same topic:
- Copy-protected CD hacked--or is it?
- How to Create a Copy Protected CD
- BMG's New Copy-Protected Audio CDs
None of which come right out and state the obvious. With enough time, all copy protection schemes get hacked.Or better yet, I can see it now, during the day of the competition. The bot's about to get sliced-n-diced by the entry from Ginsu*matic while the operator of the XP bot is trying to get through the MS validation process on a cell phone.
Then I thought about all the times I've been on the road for trade shows ... all the last minute hardware changes ... but I digress.
I'm wondering how much time (not to mention cpu cycles) these guys could have saved if these guys had hacked a much simpler operating system ? Perhaps using some old-school PD source such as Tom Poindexter's Crobots or perhaps or one of it's various mutant prodginy such as the linux based C-Robots ?
I guess that's why I see so many hard-working South-American immigrants cutting lawns ... and doing other work our fat, pasty, lard-ass, spoiled teens find beneath them.
Looks like Ruby's on the right track.
And fine, go ahead, waste your time with Joe in accounting's spreadsheet ... does it make you a better code ?
More importantly, do having to deal with either make you a MORE PRODUCTIVE coder.
I'm not talking about being anti-social. Say hi, sure, but it shouldn't be mandatory. Integrate spreadsheets. Yes, if they're not some hack by a person who's better suited at counting beans.
C'mon ... get real.
He describes how pinheads can't compress the 9 month pregnancy timeframe by hiring 9 women to be pregnant for one month concurrently.
Yourdon also makes some refrences to this type of thinking in his book "Death March".
Once again a lazy writer has dipped into the business section of the library and pulled out a book on team leaders, managing projects or some other re-hash of tripe that directs pinheads in training how to avoid employees who'll make them work for a living. Only this time, they've made it a bit more humorous by adding the comments of the most no-talented industry of all, headhunters.
You know, the type that will talk down your skills so you take the first offer and so they don't actually have to find the right fit. Here we have the typical interview of an IT manager of what would appear to be a very small shop, where having a lone gunman would be just the ticket for tackling the wide-variety of jobs and problems that plauge small but wealthy trading institutions. Along with this is the typical example of the extreme; in this the coder who wouldn't share.
Part of the problem is that writers, pinheads and 'recruiters' don't wouldn't know what a real prima donna was, even if one came up and bit them in the assets. Real artists programmers just do. They spend their time in the code. Mostly what they want in return is some appreciation for their work, and to be left out of anything that is mundane, boring or lightweight. They also want some input on the decision making process. Usually, 'attendance' problems, attitude problems and other crap begin to happen with the Prima doesn't feel apprecaited for their work. Problem is, managers excel at making sure this happens. They schedule deadlines outside of any technical reality ... nothing brings out the survival instinct in programming staff like a good old fashion Yourdonesque Death March ! Well, nothing else except when managers steal the curtain call.
And nothing creates an attitude problem quicker than allowing other non-technical staff to whine and complain about stuff that doesn't count. "The admins are upset you don't say hi to them in the hallways." "Joe in accounting is upset because you wouldn't integrate his spreadsheet into the enterprise."
As for the "I am a rock, I am an island" syndrome. Well, if managers wouldn't play the game of overstaffing client/contract projects with one hotshot at top dollar, and 5 lamers at the lowest cost then perhaps the hot-shot wouldn't be so darned hostile to those working around him. The problem is that Prima Donnas are like opera singers. You've got to give them an aria or two, let them get a laugh here and there, take a solo bow and tell them that they're the best. And most of them, except for sopranos, like to work with other professionals ... note, I said professionals. That and they love to make diciples.
Problem is, managers and headhunters egos are often too large or fragile. They're ambition is greater than the people for whom they serve ... oh wait, I forgot, most managers don't realize their job is to support their staff to make sure they've got what they want and need to get the job done. Well, not all managers.
Mine understands all of the above ... and man, all the prima donnas are to busy kicking ass because he gets it
The result is that one or two individuals do all the work, while the poorly trained, non-language-speaking, lazy lamers go to all the meetings, are assigned all the testing. Management makes money off of the 4 or 5 lamers because they're paying them peanuts while charging the client up the wazoo.
Then the same managers wonder why they've got prima donna problems.
Hmm ... after some thought. I strikes me that the writer has confused Prima Donna with someone who's either immature and/or has some mental/emotional baggage.
After 18 years, I can tell you, it's some punk who finally learned how to hook an API call in Visual Basic that makes all the noise.
Once again a lazy writer has dipped into the business section of the library and pulled out a book on team leaders, managing projects or some other re-hash of tripe that directs pinheads in training how to avoid employees who'll make them work for a living. Only this time, they've made it a bit more humorous by adding the comments of the most no-talented industry of all, headhunters. You know, the type that will talk down your skills so you take the first offer and so they don't actually have to find the right fit. Here we have the typical interview of an IT manager of what would appear to be a very small shop, where having a lone gunman would be just the ticket for tackling the wide-variety of jobs and problems that plauge small but wealthy trading institutions. Along with this is the typical example of the extreme; in this the coder who wouldn't share. Part of the problem is that writers, pinheads and 'recruiters' don't wouldn't know what a real prima donna was, even if one came up and bit them in the assets. Real artists programmers just do. They spend their time in the code. Mostly what they want in return is some appreciation for their work, and to be left out of anything that is mundane, boring or lightweight. They also want some input on the decision making process. Usually, 'attendance' problems, attitude problems and other crap begin to happen with the Prima doesn't feel apprecaited for their work. Problem is, managers excel at making sure this happens. They schedule deadlines outside of any technical reality ... nothing brings out the survival instinct in programming staff like a good old fashion Yourdonesque Death March ! Well, nothing else except when managers steal the curtain call.
And nothing creates an attitude problem quicker than allowing other non-technical staff to whine and complain about stuff that doesn't count. "The admins are upset you don't say hi to them in the hallways." "Joe in accounting is upset because you wouldn't integrate his spreadsheet into the enterprise."
As for the "I am a rock, I am an island" syndrome. Well, if managers wouldn't play the game of overstaffing client/contract projects with one hotshot at top dollar, and 5 lamers at the lowest cost then perhaps the hot-shot wouldn't be so darned hostile to those working around him.
The problem is that Prima Donnas are like opera singers. You've got to give them an aria or two, let them get a laugh here and there, take a solo bow and tell them that they're the best. And most of them, except for sopranos, like to work with other professionals ... note, I said professionals. That and they love to make diciples.
Problem is, managers and headhunters egos are often too large or fragile. They're ambition is greater than the people for whom they serve ... oh wait, I forgot, most managers don't realize their job is to support their staff to make sure they've got what they want and need to get the job done.
Well, not all managers. Mine understands all of the above ... and man, all the prima donnas are to busy kicking ass because he gets it.
I dunno, is there a CPAN equivalent to Ruby ? I'm really not on the mood to re-invent the wheel.
The way this discussion is going, I figured I might mention a website that is dedicated to TV Shows that go from popular, to DOA through a process known as "Jumping the Shark". Here's are the gory X-File specifics to this : http://jumptheshark.com/x/xfiles.htm
One word of advice for Kodak ... if possible, port the code to 'other' platforms, and GPL the darn code. It might buy Kodak the survivability it seeks ... and deny others the ability to blackmail them to get their app on top.
I'm no lawyer, nor do I play one on T.V. But isn't there a Constitutional/Bill-o-Rights issue here of due justice that superscedes the rental companies policy ?
The stock example given to us was the "copy of a photocopy" ... where eventually, the document would degrade into a cacophony
of white noise.
So the question du'jour is, does this princpal apply to ORBS listings ?
While we're on the topic of wierd and wacky patents ... Here's a fun little site I stumbled across http://soundreach.simplenet.com/psp/
Thanks ... that one should be easy to spot from across the room.